The Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen, opines artist Caroline Coon in Punk Britannia (Fri, 9pm, BBC4), was an antidote to the "ghastly arselicking" of the monarchy during the silver jubilee celebrations in 1977. As David Hockney, Paul McCartney, Bono, and, most deflatingly ironic of all, punk stylist Vivienne Westwood queued up to grovel at a recent diamond jubilee celebration for Her Maj, Johnny Rotten and co must have wondered if their outrages were a waste of saliva.

Latest polls show a boost in support for the Queen and her stoical ability to carry on existing, if only to keep her son, with all his attendant talking-to-the-trees proclivities, from occupying the throne. Kingdom Of Plants (Thu, 7pm, Sky Atlantic), hosted by David Attenborough, might be grimly apposite in that event. However, those who agree with Tom Paine's dictum that the monarchy represents a "degradation and lessening of ourselves" can take heart in Surviving Progress (Mon, 10pm, BBC4). Historian Ronald Wright asserts that civilisations jeopardise themselves when inequality runs rampant and the peasants are not given their share of the land. Domination by tiny elites, we are shown, leads to the ruin of all. So never mind It's A Royal Knockout, ma'am, give us back much of Scotland and Cornwall.

Grayson Perry's All In The Best Possible Taste (Tue, 10pm, Channel 4), meanwhile, sees the artist make non-Bayeux tapestries of England, starring the proles rather than the Williams and Harolds. He travels to Sunderland and finds in its musclebound gym rats, hot-hatch racers, and WKD-swigging lasses patterns of ritual and tribalism at which we turn up our class-conscious noses at our peril.

Another Grayson and better queens – Larry, Elton John, Paul O'Grady – feature in God Save The Queens (Thu, 8pm, Sky Atlantic), which shows how gay entertainers have affected attitudes towards homosexuality for the better in the new Elizabethan age. The late Donna Summer, subject of a TOTP2 (Sun, 10pm, BBC2), was crowned Disco Queen in 1977 with I Feel Love. Would that she had reigned over us much, much longer.